


Maybe One Day

by Mireille



Category: Sports Night
Genre: 5 Things, Community: fire_fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-02
Updated: 2007-11-02
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13696059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Five times Dan thought about coming out.





	Maybe One Day

"It isn't a  _sport_ ," Dan said emphatically. "It's a bunch of guys driving around in circles very fast."  
  
Casey snorted. "So says the man who thinks we don't have enough sailing coverage?"   
  
"That's different."  
  
"How?"  
  
"The America's Cup has a noble history going back a hundred and fifty years," Dan said. "Can NASCAR say that? I think not, my friend."  
  
"They didn't have  _cars_  back before the Civil War, Danny."  
  
"What's your point?"  
  
"My point is that it's a lousy comparison." Casey leaned back on the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him. "My point is also that NASCAR is a sport. Not only that, it's a popular sport."  
  
"It's a popular sport among  _rednecks_ ," Dan muttered.  
  
"It's more popular than soccer, and as much as you hate it, you admit soccer's a sport. Also, don't make redneck jokes in front of the new intern; she's from Alabama."  
  
"Is she any good?"  
  
"She's an intern," Casey pointed out. "She pulls tape and makes copies. But she's not a complete idiot. And she likes NASCAR, which brings me to another point: women. Forty percent of NASCAR fans are female."  
  
Dan raised an eyebrow. "Have you been talking to Jeremy again?"  
  
"Jeremy knows his statistics, Danny. Forty percent. Know how many NFL fans are women?"  
  
"I'm guessing... less than forty percent?" Dan said.  
  
"Sixteen percent."  
  
"So basically, we're covering NASCAR so we can meet women?" He shook his head, not quite able to believe that Casey would use  _that_  as an argument.  
  
"Jeremy's been doing research. He thinks that if we target some of our coverage to woo that female demographic, we can pick up a ratings point." Then Casey grinned. "But we can  _say_  we're doing it to meet women, if anyone asks."  
  
"And what if when  _People_  comes to do that interview next week, I tell them that we're not interested in meeting women? Can we ignore NASCAR then?"  
  
Casey shot him a wide-eyed, panicked look, with all the things that Casey worried about at four a.m. lying behind it, and Dan sighed. "Okay, you win. NASCAR coverage in the thirties. What do we have?" 

***

  
  
For two people who'd spent at least twelve hours a day together  _before_  they'd started having sex, it was almost unbelievable that they'd gone three weeks without seeing one another. But first Dan had taken some vacation time to celebrate his brother David's oldest daughter's eighth-grade graduation, and then Casey had had to take an emergency week off because Charlie's appendix had picked the week Lisa had taken him to Disney World to rupture, and when Casey got back, Dan had been in Athens for Olympic coverage, because the new CSC actually  _did_  spend money on international sporting events.  
  
When Dan got back, Casey hadn't looked him in the eye, and Dan wondered if Casey was really  _that_  pissed that he'd taken Casey's place in Athens. It had been Isaac's call; he  _could_  have pulled Casey away from a still-recuperating Charlie, but he hadn't wanted to. And Dan had been fairly sure that Casey wouldn't have wanted him to, either; no matter what faults Casey might have as a dad, Dan had no doubt about how fiercely he loved his kid.  
  
The day was a crazy one, which Dan had expected from his first day in the office in weeks, and that made the silence in their office easier to deal with; he didn't have time to wonder where Casey was or why he was avoiding Dan. Casey'd written most of the script already, because they hadn't known for sure what time Dan's flight was going to get in or how jet-lagged he was going to be, and apart from tweaking his part a little, Dan hadn't had much to do, and no reason to go hunting for Casey.  
  
Well, no reason other than that it had been three weeks, and Casey'd been going through hell for part of that time, and Dan had missed him in a way that no nightly phone call had been able to make up for.  
  
There was still an hour to go before they had to be in wardrobe, and Dan had just about decided to go looking for Casey to have this out before they went on the air, when his phone rang.  
  
"Meet me in the editing room," was all Casey said before hanging up.  
  
Dan didn't even consider not going; he didn't know what Casey wanted to talk to him about, but if he wanted to talk to him at all, that was a good sign.  
  
The blinds on the editing room window were drawn, and as soon as Dan was inside, Casey locked the door behind them. "This is ridiculous," he said, and Dan's heart sank. He knew Casey still stressed out over the whole "secret relationship" deal on a regular basis. Hell,  _Dan_  stressed out over it. If it wasn't for Paul--the therapist who'd replaced Abby when she got married and moved to New Jersey--Dan wouldn't have been able to take it. At least he had someone who was required by his professional code of conduct to keep his mouth shut about whatever Dan told him.  
  
"Three weeks, Danny.  _Three weeks,_ " Casey said, and Dan realized that his despondency might have been premature. At least, the way Casey's arms had gone around his waist--sliding down his back to grab his ass, not that Dan was complaining--seemed to be a sign in that direction.  
  
"You've gone three weeks without sex before," Dan said, grinning and leaning in to kiss Casey, slow and deep, the way he'd been missing for the past three weeks. "Granted, that was before you knew what sex with me was like."  
  
"I don't know what sex with you is like," Casey said. "I think I forgot." But his hands were on Dan's belt buckle, undoing it and then moving on to the button of Dan's pants, and Dan wasn't so sure that Casey had forgotten anything at all.  
  
By the time they left the editing room, Dan could feel his life settling back onto an even keel, at least as much as it ever did. That feeling lasted all the way up to 12:14 a.m., when Dana cornered him on his way off the set. "I kept the interns away from the editing room," she said, "since you and Casey were working in there."  
  
"Um, okay," Dan said.  
  
"I kept the  _interns_  away from the  _editing room_ ," Dana repeated, "since you and Casey were  _working_  in there." This time, she accompanied her words with a jerk of her head and a twitch that might have been a knowing wink.  
  
"Oh," Dan said. "Thanks."  
  
"You're not going to be  _working_  together in there any more, are you? I mean, being a television show and all, it's not as if we're going to actually  _need_  an editing room, or anything, but it's the appearance of the thing."  
  
"No. I'm pretty sure that was a one-time occurrence."  
  
"Good." Then she gave him a quick smile. "And good for you," she said. "I mean--you're good? You're happy? You look happy," she said, which was news to Dan. Any time his boss just let him know that he'd narrowly missed being caught having sex at work and outed to the entire  _planet_ , "happy" was not his guess for the first expression on his face. "Stark terror," maybe. Especially once it occurred to him that Dana was really bad at keeping secrets.  
  
"I'm good," he said. "But Dana, this is--we're not telling anybody.  _Anyone_. Not you. Not Natalie. Not Isaac. Nobody knows." Except for his shrink, but he wasn't going to get into that.  
  
Dana blinked, frowning at him. "Dan? I'm not going to say anything about you guys. I care about you, and I care about the show, and I'm not putting any of that in jeopardy."  
  
"Yeah, I know," he said. He did believe her, he realized; Dana did have enough common sense to know what a disaster this could be for them--for all of them--but he decided not to tell Casey what had happened. At least one of them could  _not_  worry about how close they'd come to seeing their whole lives crash down around them.  
  
"Maybe one day things will be different?" she said.   
  
Dan managed a faint smile, echoing, "Maybe one day."  
  


***

  
  
  
"What were you and Esther talking about all that time?" Casey asked through a mouthful of toothpaste.  
  
"Nothing," Dan said, turning toward the dresser to get out some socks for tomorrow. It was astounding how domestic two people could get when they didn't technically live in the same house.  
  
"How much 'nothing' can two people talk about?" Casey leaned over the sink, spitting out the toothpaste.  
  
"Casey, we work in television," Dan said. "I think you  _know_  how long two people can talk about nothing."  
  
"Yeah," Casey agreed. "Two and a half minutes when the satellite link to Pamplona goes down and we can't show the running of the bulls. But Esther had you cornered half the evening."  
  
"Isaac asked me to dance with her." Dan had wondered if Isaac knew, if he'd recognized that Casey was a lot better at playing the dating game than Dan was, and that dancing with his soon-to-be-ex boss's wife would make it less likely people would think it was strange he didn't dance with anyone else.  
  
"I didn't ask you about the dancing. I asked about the talking." For a second, Dan wondered if Casey was  _jealous_. Of Esther. He couldn't think of anything more ludicrous if he'd tried. But then Casey went on, and his unusually intense interest in who Dan talked to started to make sense. "There's nothing wrong with Isaac, is there? I mean, this retirement thing was pretty sudden. He's not sick, is he?"  
  
"No," Dan said, and now that he knew what Casey had been worried about, he could see the tight set of Casey's shoulders easing in relief. "No, he's not sick. That's why he's retiring now; Esther wants to be able to travel while they're both still pretty healthy." Dan had always liked Esther, but he'd never really thought about things from her perspective before: waiting for Isaac to retire so that, for the first time ever, she could have him to herself. He was starting to understand that perspective better than he wanted to.  
  
Casey finished flossing and crossed the narrow hallway into the bedroom. "I'm staying here tonight," he said, unnecessarily. "We were out late, and your place is closer. No one's going to think it's weird."  
  
Dan stretched, getting into bed and opening his arms for Casey to slide into his embrace. He didn't mention the other things he and Esther had talked about, how she told him she worried about him, that it wasn't good for a man to spend his life going home to an empty apartment. "Find someone to spend your life with, Daniel," she'd said, patting him on the shoulder. "You'll never regret it."  
  
He'd made himself look away from where Casey was getting a drink for the woman he'd been talking to, and swallowed hard to keep from telling Esther that she was right: no matter how hard this was, it was the one thing he'd never regretted.  
  


***

  
  
  
"You're an idiot," was the first thing Natalie said.  
  
Dan blinked. "Usually I get to say more than 'hello' before people are insulting me."  
  
"Usually, you're not this much of an idiot. Let me talk to Casey."  
  
"You call me up when I'm on vacation, insult me, and then don't even want to talk to me?" He shouldn't have even answered the phone. This was his vacation; this was the vacation they had schemed and scheduled and pleaded with Dana to help them get. This was the first time they'd both had more than two days off at the same time since  _Sports Night_  had gone on the air, and Dana had already told them that if the ratings tanked because they'd had substitute anchors filling both chairs for a week, she was going to kill them.  
  
The substitute anchors Dana had brought in were Jennifer Atwater and Tina Lake, both of whom knew as much about sports as--well, not as much as  _they_ did, but as much as the average sports anchor did--and, Dan had to admit, were probably more visually appealing to the average  _Sports Night_  viewer than he and Casey were. They had decided they could risk it.  
  
"I called  _Casey_ , you moron, you answered the wrong phone." Dan took the cell phone away from his ear for a second, looking at it suspiciously. It looked like his phone. Then again, so did the other phone on the coffee table; Dan picked that one up and flipped it open, frowning when he realized it was definitely his. Shit. Natalie was right; he'd answered Casey's phone by mistake.  
  
"Sorry," he said. "Casey's asleep; do you need me to wake him up?"  
  
"Just have him call me," Natalie said. "And Dan? Be more careful. What if it hadn't been me calling? It's not like you're at work, where you have a good excuse for picking up the wrong phone. You want people to wonder why you and Casey went on vacation together?"  
  
 _Yeah,_  Dan thought. He wanted them to wonder. He wanted them to ask questions, because he and Casey had both agreed, finally, that if someone  _asked_ , they weren't going to lie. They wouldn't volunteer anything, but they weren't going to lie.  
  
But instead of saying that, Dan just sighed, and promised to have Casey call Natalie as soon as he woke up, and made a mental note to get a different phone.  
  


***

  
  
  
"So listen, Dan," his editor began. Dan had only been working on this project for a year--if you didn't count the thirty years of his life that had gone into making it possible--but he'd learned by month two that when Ronni started out with "so listen, Dan," listening to her was the last thing he wanted to do. The first "So listen," had been about the ghostwriter she'd wanted to bring in; he'd won that argument, and all the subsequent ones, because apparently Dan's memoir was a reasonably big coup for a junior editor, but "So listen," was always his cue that he was going to have to fight her on this one.  
  
"About the dedication page," she went on.  
  
"You told me I had until Tuesday to get that to you," he said. "It was still Tuesday when I sent the e-mail." It shouldn't have taken that long to write it, he knew, but he'd wanted to get it just right. It was easier to fine-tune something he'd written if he had Casey to bounce it off of, but this time, he couldn't do that. Casey hadn't seen the book, let alone the dedication; he'd told Dan that he trusted him not to make Casey look like the biggest asshole in all of sports broadcasting, and beyond that, he was willing to be surprised. Since Dan had wanted his book to be more a collection of amusing anecdotes about sports journalism than anything else, he was pretty sure he could write the book without making Casey look like an asshole, even when Dan was writing about the times when he  _had_  been one.  
  
"No, that's fine, I have it," she said. "But... did you read it over carefully?"  
  
"Oh, God, I spelled your name wrong, didn't I?" He'd thanked her and his agent first of all. He'd even managed to not call Ronni a pain in his ass.  
  
"No," she said. "No, that part's great. Thank you. It's the last paragraph. I don't think you realize how that's going to read to some people. Obviously, most people are going to understand that in this day and age, a man can express his emotions without it being, um--"  
  
"Vaguely gay?" Dan said, chuckling. He'd been reminded of that conversation when he'd written up the story of why he always sang such strange and obscure songs to his co-workers on their birthdays, and it had been a lot more entertaining in retrospect than it had been at the time.  
  
"Yes," Ronni said. He could hear the  _tap, tap, tap_  of her pencil on the edge of her desk, the only sign that she was uncomfortable with this conversation. "I'm just afraid that you're going to alienate a percentage of your fan base when they misinterpret what you've said."  
  
"You're right," Dan said suddenly. "I need to change the last line." He'd known that already; he'd kept looking at that sentence and wondering if he was really making the right decision.  
  
"It's not the last line that--"  
  
"Yeah, it is," Dan said. "Take off the last word. Then it's perfect."  
  
There was a long pause, and then Ronni said, "You're sure about that, Dan?"  
  
"Absolutely."  
  
When Ronni hung up, Dan opened up the file on his computer, reading over the last part of the dedication:  _To my partner Casey, without whom none of the good parts of the last thirty years would have happened. I love you, man._  
  
Slowly, deliberately, he backspaced over the last word and then nodded. Yeah. That was perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
